Weightless
by Audrey V
Summary: Anorexic Holtzmann prompt from the Ghostbusters Kink Meme. Pre-canon. Eventually Yatesmann. - Warnings: mentions of a teenager having consensual (but still illegal in some places) sex with adults, eating disorders, mental health issues.


Jillian Holtzmann is fourteen and starting her freshman year at college. It's both easier and harder than she expected it would be. Having to work to be successful is a new thing for her, but tiny, chaotic Jillian throws herself into it with her signature determination.

She keeps up academically with her classmates, even though she's still two years away from being able to legally drive. She settles in as well as can be expected. She's never been great at making friends so she doesn't get too upset when the other students look straight through her.

"It's just weird," she overhears a particularly pretty brunette in her biochemistry seminar say. "She's so little."

"And that baby face! She's all cheek. Seriously, it's like someone brought their kid sister to class."

Jillian bites her lip and concentrates on her notes. When she gets back to her room— a single because who could she share with?— she looks critically at herself in the mirror.

She's always been small for her age, but her inconsistent eating habits since she started college had added a few pounds to her slight frame. Unfortunately she hasn't grown any taller, so the weight has settled in her hips and thighs and yes, in her cheeks. She puffs them out like a chipmunk and then slowly exhales.

The long, wild blonde hair isn't helping her look any older. There's so much of it that it swallows her up. She tugs at a curl, extends it to its full length, then lets it spring back up. The movement gives her an idea about a personal transportation device she's been working on and she turns to her desk, mirror forgotten.

It takes her three weeks, but she builds it. The boots put a literal spring in her step, and she's even managed to make them stable. She finishes them a few days before Christmas break and takes them home to show her aunt.

"Jillian! You look beautiful," her aunt says, hugging her tight. Jillian prefers physical contact be on her terms and shifts uncomfortably until her aunt releases her.

"College has been good for you,"the slight, grey-haired woman continues. "You've finally gotten rid of that baby fat."

Jillian frowns. She starts to tell her aunt about her invention but suddenly her words are hot and jumbled in her mouth, acrid like the back of your tongue feels after you throw up. She mumbles a thank you for what was probably meant as a compliment and goes upstairs.

In her childhood bedroom (or the closest thing she had to one, even though she only lived in it from ages 9 to 14), she strips down to her underwear. She stands in front of the dusty vanity and looks at herself.

Her aunt is right. In her quest to perfect her device, she'd missed more than a few meals at the dining hall. Her face is angular now, with sharp edges at her cheekbones and jaw. She slides a hand down her side to her hip. When she pulls her underwear down just a bit, she realizes her hipbone is visible.

The person in the mirror looks less like a child. Jillian isn't sure why it's comforting to see the outline of her ribs.

She says she isn't hungry at Christmas dinner. Her cousins are home from college so her aunt is content to let her be excused to her room. Jillian makes an excuse about some work she needs to finish during break and goes back to MIT the next day.

She's just turned fifteen when she discovers that with a little eyeliner and a lot of attitude she can pass for a typical college student. She wears her hair up in messy buns and layers oversized band t-shirts with plaid button downs and skirts with lots of buckles. She trades a guy a research paper on string theory for a decent fake ID that says she's 21.

She doesn't know why she bothered, because she doesn't go out. She works harder, longer. She buries herself in her research. She sometimes doesn't come up for air until long after the dining halls have closed. It's okay. It's easier to make innovative connections in her brain when it's floating. She experiments to find the precise number of calories she can consume and still feel that way. It's less than she thought it would be, but that's okay too.

She's never had people, so she can't really miss them, but there's an cold ache inside her that won't die down. One night she swipes on bright red lipstick and lets her hair down in a ridiculous golden cascade. She slips on a tank top that almost fits, that did fit a month ago before she needed to chase that floating feeling every night.

She uses the ID to get into an odd little dive in the north end. It's far enough from campus that she won't see anyone she knows. She drinks alone at the bar, awkward, feeling like she's transparent. Everyone looks right through her until there's a warmth at her elbow and a man with a crooked grin is offering to buy her another.

She accepts. He's a music student at Berklee. He isn't as smart as she is, but she decides that if she waits to meet someone who is both as smart as she is and attracted to her, she'll die a virgin. There's a void inside her and maybe this is the thing she's been missing.

She goes home with him, but they don't make it to his bedroom. He's kissing her in the living room, hands groping at her through the tank top and under her skirt, and she can't put it into words but she knows this is not what she wants. He pulls her underwear to the side and touches her gently with his fingertips and she's uncomfortable and turned on and panicked and intrigued, all at the same time.

Her resolve to follow through fails when he unzips his pants. She bolts, escapes without so much as an explanation, mostly because she doesn't have one.

She walks the whole way home to Cambridge. Back in her room, the girl in the mirror is disheveled, all smeared mascara and wild hair and purple hickeys on her neck.

When she throws up, she tells herself it was the beer.

She cries in the shower. The hot water thrums against her skin as she lets it all out. She doesn't know how she can be so good at science and so shit at everything else.

The water runs cold. She wraps herself in a towel and goes back to her room. When she lays back in her bed, she feels empty and numb and full of lead.

Jillian is wisp thin and pale, all blue eyes and bony hands the first time she stands in front of a ghost.

It isn't really a ghost, of course, because ghosts don't exist. It's a living statue who performs in Harvard Square for tips, but she dresses like a ghost, in a long, tattered wedding dress, and her skin is painted white.

Jillian is sixteen. It's fall when she lingers on the cobblestones and stares, wondering how a person can communicate so many things just by standing still.

Jillian makes a habit of sitting on a bench a few paces away from the statue and watching how people interact with her. Most walk by as if she were invisible. Some fling insults at her, tell her to get a real job. The ghost stays motionless and all their harsh words bounce right off.

Jillian wishes she was made of marble, or maybe just air.

She always puts money in the ghost's vase. Each time she does, the ghost comes to life, turns to her and smiles. Sometimes she gives her a flower. One day she bends down, balancing precariously on her milk crate, and kisses Jillian on the mouth. It's gentle and chaste. The ghost girl straightens up and she's a statue again, but it's too late. Something in Jillian has shifted, shattered.

Back in her dorm, she flips through the back pages of the free paper until she finds what she's looking for. She dresses in a denim skirt and a Nirvana shirt with the neck cut out.

Her fake ID gets her through the door again without a hitch, even though it's a very different kind of bar this time. She orders a beer and sits on a stool.

The person who sits down next to her is a woman with long dark hair and a wolfish grin. She's a grad student at Harvard who's studying the relationship between science fiction and real scientific discovery.

"See, once someone can imagine it, other people want to actually do it," she says before launching into a passionate diatribe about how Star Trek data pads and communicators will someday be commonplace tech.

Jillian can't stop staring at her mouth. They've volleyed back and forth about science a few times when she gets bold, leans toward the girl (who she's nicknamed Lieutenent Dax) and whispers "How badly do you want to fuck me right now?"

She gets to find out ten minutes later. Dax has her pressed against the bathroom wall, skirt bunched around her waist, fingers slowly sliding inside her. Jillian is whimpering, gasping, pleading for more. Dax pulls her hair and kisses her as she sends her into orbit.

Someone bangs on the bathroom door and Dax says they should probably go.

"There's another bathroom," Jillian says firmly. She drops to her knees on the grimy bathroom floor and smirks. "Unless you don't want me to eat you out."

Dax giggles and unbuttons her jeans.

At sixteen, fucking a woman a decade older in a dyke bar bathroom, Jillian Holtzmann has her first glimpse of the power she can wield. It's intoxicating knowing that with a few touches and careful observation, she can make a woman thrash and scream her name, even if "Jillian" doesn't sound like it should fit her anymore.

Back home in her bed in her dorm, she stares at the ceiling and decides that she'll go by Holtzmann from now on. Fucking feels almost as good as floating. She shifts her focus.

Holtzmann is 20 when she meets Dr. Rebecca Goren. Dr. Goren's eyes narrow behind her wire-rimmed glasses as she looks the slight blonde up and down.

"You can take the locker that is second from the right. I don't want any of your personal property or your drama strewn around my lab, understood?"

"Yes, ma'am," Holtzmann quips, earning a glare. Whatever. She doesn't need to impress some uptight researcher, even if said researcher is one of the most brilliant minds in the history of science AND her new boss.

She'll get through grad school the way she got through undergrad. She'll keep her head down, work hard and focus on the things she can control.

The craving for the floating feeling returns with a vengeance. She chases it.

Her first Christmas home from grad school her aunt tells her she's too thin and asks if she has a boyfriend. The woman just looks stunned when she says through clenched teeth that her body isn't up for public discussion.

When her aunt brings up the boyfriend thing again a few days later at dinner, Holzmann loses it. She tells her aunt to fuck off, and that she doesn't have a boyfriend but she's fucked a lot of women recently, and none of them thought she was too thin.

Her cousins stare as she shouts. They all look alarmed or disgusted, except for the youngest one, Joy, who watches with the careful detachment of a scientist.

Holtzmann stomps out of the house on Christmas Eve. The only member of her family who stays in touch is 14 year old Joy, who Holtzmann knows is genius-level smart and who she suspects will turn out to be queer. They exchange letters and cards. Holtzmann sends her a fancy graphing calculator for her birthday.

The rest of her relatives are content to let her fade out.

"This is good work, Jillian," Dr. Goren says as she examines Holtzmann's newest invention. "Innovative."

"Thank you." The words are small and Holtzmann wonders how praise can be just as uncomfortable as criticism.

"I'm taking you to dinner tonight. You deserve a reward."

"You don't have to—"

"Of course I don't. I want to." Dr. Goren says firmly, and the matter is closed.

They go to an Italian place pretty far from campus. It's dark but there are candles. They're tucked into a corner and Holtzmann likes that it feels like she and Dr. Goren are the only people in the room.

She can't remember the last time she shared a meal with someone. Drinks, of course, with girls in bars, but eating feels complicated and she prefers to do it alone.

"If you don't like it, we'll have them bring you something else," Dr. Goren says gently as Holtzmann pushes her ravioli around on her plate.

"No, it's great," she says quickly, stuffing one into her mouth and chewing theatrically. She keeps her bright face on with only the barest wobble when she has to swallow.

Dr. Goren studies Holtzmann over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses. Then she drops the matter and pours her student another glass of wine.

Dr. Goren is fucking with her, Holtzmann decides. One dinner turned into two turned into that plus lunch twice a week turned into the frustrating woman offering to cook for her. Holtzmann keeps suggesting drinks instead or just a work session in the lab, but Dr. Goren seems insistent on feeding her. She doesn't comment on how much Holtzmann eats or doesn't eat, though, which means eventually the awkward blonde gets used to their outings.

She still needs to let her brain float when she's in the depths of her work, but she finds that she can achieve that even if she has a few bites of something with her mentor. Her desire to please Dr. Goren starts to win the struggle with her need to be weightless.

She didn't expect any of her family to be there the day she officially becomes Dr. Jillian Holtzmann. She's a solo act and this is no different, but when she walks across the stage there are blue eyes that look just like hers watching. Her cousin Joy came out to her parents over the holidays. It didn't go well so she's been sleeping on Holtzmann's living room floor ever since. The kid already has a full ride (okay, it's to Caltech, but still impressive) and so she'll only be around a few months. Holtzmann wouldn't mind if she stayed longer, but she doesn't say that.

Holtzmann looks out into the mass of spectators and see Joy and Dr. Goren there, shoulder to shoulder. They're both beaming, totally fucking full of pride and she doesn't even know how to process that. She blushes and gives them a wink as they hand over her degree.

Dr. Goren— Rebecca— runs a perfectly manicured fingernail over Holtzmann's side.

"I worry about you, Jillian," she says quietly, tracing the outline of each rib. "It was easier when I thought you were just a broke grad student, subsisting on ramen noodles and cheap beer. That I could fix."

Holtzmann says nothing. She stares up at the ceiling as Dr. Goren— no, Rebecca, it's Rebecca, she reminds herself. Except she can't quite accept that, so in her mind it's still Dr. Goren's hands that are mapping out her torso, from sharp collarbones to ribs.

Holtzmann's breath catches when fingertips glide against her jutting hipbone.

"Can you explain it to me?" Dr. Goren asks. "I understand if you can't but… I would like to know what this means to you."

Her words are so gentle they cut through Holtzmann like daggers. Her chest clenches and she reaches for the other woman, intending to distract her in the way she's best at, but Dr. Goren knows her far too well to fall for that trick.

"Jillian. I'm not judging you. And there is nothing you could tell me that would make me love you any less." Dr. Goren pauses and looks thoughtful. "I take it back. I might love you less if you told me you'd decided to take that government job."

Holtzmann grins. "You don't think I can build weapons of mass annihilation?"

"I know you can. That's why I'd be upset." Dr. Goren kisses her and even after all these months of coming unraveled in the woman's bed, it still makes Holtzmann feel warm inside. "Please. Talk to me."

Holtzmann nestles her face into the crook of Dr. Goren's neck. She stays there with her eyes closed, but she does as she's asked.

"It helps me make connections in my mind. My body gets… weightless. Transparent. And then I'm nothing but brain and everything clicks in ways that it doesn't when I feel weighed down." She sighs heavily and hopes Dr. Goren doesn't notice that she's crying, except of course she will because her tears are dropping onto the bare skin of the professor's neck. "I'm careful," she insists. "I know exactly how far I can push it, how many calories I need to keep functioning but still be able to let my mind float. I track all the essential nutrients. I've got methods and logbooks. It's not unsafe."

"Let's say I believe that," Dr. Goren murmurs to the top of Holtzmann's head. "If all you've said is accurate, why are you so much thinner now than when I met you?"

"I'm not."

"The data doesn't support that. It's bad science, Jillian," Dr. Goren says and Holtzmann's heart breaks, because she hates disappointing this woman and because she knows Dr. Goren is right.

"Maybe."

"You are one of the most brilliant minds of your generation. I won't let this kill you. But I also have no idea how to help you."

Holtzmann nods. She's exhausted and raw, but she manages a grin. "I could think of a few things," she purrs, and Dr. Goren gets the hint.

"The conversation can be over for tonight. But we have to get you through this, darling. It isn't going away and neither am I," she says and Holtzmann believes her. She believes her and it scares her and makes her feel so fucking safe, all at the same time.

Dr. Goren doesn't go away, but Holtzmann does. She puts her most important possessions into an old, taped-together duffle bag and disappears a few days later. She leaves a peace offering for Dr. Goren: a pin that she welded together from a few scraps. It matches her "screw u" necklace. Months later she realizes how the token could have been interpreted and hopes Dr. Goren understood the deeper meaning and didn't take it at face value.

When her cousin Joy graduates at the top of her class, Holtzmann shows up, a ghost in the crowd. She looks around, hoping her aunt had grown enough as a person to come celebrate her daughter's achievement, but she's not there.

After the ceremony, they go back to Joy's studio apartment. She takes off her cap and gown while Holtzmann sits at the tiny kitchen table with a beer.

"Got a girlfriend?" Holtzmann calls and she hears Joy laugh in the other room.

"Like a dozen." Joy comes out of the bedroom wearing a t-shirt and jeans. She's thinner than Holtzmann remembers, much thinner, and that worries her enough that she can't stop herself from bringing it up.

"You're smaller than I remember," she blurts out and Joy shrugs.

"So are you," she replies lightly and even though Holtzmann gets the hint and drops it, in the back of her mind she wonders if this is her fault or if they were both programmed this way by the genetic code they share.

Holtzmann knocks around for a bit, wanders really, but then she's offered a trial run at CERN. It doesn't work out, in an even worse way than things usually don't work out for her, and two people end up in the hospital.

She's discharged after a month, with new scars on her midsection and up ten pounds from the carb-laden hospital food that they insisted she eat. The other guy is still in a coma a year later when she lands at her next waypoint: the Kenneth P. Higgins Institute of Science.

Holtzmann detours to Boston before heading to New York. She sneaks into one of Dr. Goren's seminars and she's pleased to see her little gift pinned to the professor's tweed jacket. She thinks about saying hello, allows herself the momentary fantasy of Dr. Goren touching her again, but in the end she simple catches the woman's eye from the back of the room, flashes her a two-fingered salute and departs.

The strange brunette who shares the lab is not Holtzmann's type. She's always liked tall women, wiry ones who could kick her ass. Abby Yates isn't that at all. She's round and soft and short and she has tits for days, which is so not what Holtzmann is into, until one day it totally is.

She asks Abby out for a drink. Abby counters with dinner and Holtzmann accepts. It's been so long since anyone had asked that she's forgotten how hard it is to eat with other people.

She remembers when her menu is open and she's panicking. "Make that two," she says to the waitress, even though she's not entirely sure what Abby ordered. It doesn't matter. Whatever this thing between them is will be ruined before dessert, because Dr. Jillian Holtzmann is close to achieving cold fusion but she's incapable of normal.

Except Abby doesn't point out how little Holtzmann eats, and she doesn't ask questions either. She notices, Holtzmann knows that she does, but Abby just lets it go.

The brunette scientist doesn't say a word about it, not during dinner, not during the cab ride back to Abby's apartment, not when they're sitting awkwardly on the couch.

Abby doesn't broach the subject until after Holtzmann has made her come twice. She makes a move to reciprocate but the blonde stops her.

"I'm not into a two way street," Holtzmann mumbles, which has been true since she walked away from Dr. Goren. Fucking someone is easy; letting someone else fuck you is a different story.

"Okay." Abby chews on her bottom lip for a moment. "Is it because you don't want me to see you naked? Because I already know how thin you are under all those layers."

Holtzmann tries to protest but it dies in her throat when Abby strokes her cheek.

"I'm not judging you. I've been in recovery for eight years from an eating disorder," the brunette explains. "Different from yours, but I know what it looks like when a person is struggling."

Holtzmann opens her mouth to deny everything but all that comes out is "oh."

"I won't make you talk about it. But I wanted to tell you that about me, in case I could help. Like if you want my shrink's number, or for a person to listen who understands." Abby kisses her on the nose and grins. "Or a nice, relaxing orgasm with someone who you don't have to worry about judging you."

Abby Yates turns out to be an angel in Holtzmann's life, and eventually she accepts everything Abby's offered to her. She starts therapy. She cries on Abby's shoulder. She comes with Abby's fingers inside her.

She lets Abby kiss a trail down her body. Abby's mouth catalogues every hollow and every clearly defined bone, but it's okay.

She's not okay, not yet, but she thinks she will be.

"I miss it," Holtzmann confesses one night. She's been in therapy for six months and she's gained twelve pounds. She's still thin but not alarmingly so. "I miss floating. I miss feeling like I'm all brain, no body."

Abby seems to always know the right thing to say, even when it's nothing at all. She holds on to Holtzmann and listens.

"I've never been this happy," the inventor continues. "But I still miss it," she says, running her fingers along her hip, which no longer protrudes.

"It's okay to miss it," Abby says finally. "It's like home, the home you grew up in. You can miss it and still know that it isn't a good place for you to go back to."

Holtzmann frowns. She feels tears springing to her eyes, forced out by the pressure of something in her chest that's swelling, pushing everything else out. She fights it. Her body goes rigid in Abby's arms.

"What's going on?" The brunette asks in that quiet, gentle way that Holtzmann knows means that she doesn't have to answer.

"I rely on you too much," she says finally, even though it's not what she meant to say. She shakes her head and her fingers clench around Abby's wrist. "No, no, that's not it. It's just, I understand 'home' as a theory but it doesn't— conceptually knowing a thing is different than experiencing it in practice, and I've never had, except— this…"

She feels Abby's thumb brush against her cheek. When she touches her own fingers to her face, they come away wet.

"This is where I want to say 'I love you' but the way I feel about you defies taxonomy. There are no benchmarks for me to compare it to and I want to say words that don't make sense and that are scientific impossibilities but they are, they feel— " Holtzmann stumbles over her words. She breathes, focusing on the Abby's fingertips tenderly stroking the skin between her breasts. With anyone else it would be suggestive, but even though they fuck this is something completely different, and the touch is soothing rather than sexual.

"You're a person, not a place, and I haven't even known you a year."

"But?"

"But you're my home," Holtzmann manages to whisper and it's still not the thing she wanted to say but it's closer. "You saved me."

"No," Abby says sharply. She sits up and Holtzmann can see with perfect clarity that this is yet another thing she's ruined.

All she can do is fold her arms across her chest and hope Abby does it fast and clean. She'd trade this disaster for another lab explosion, because then at least she'd be unconscious.

"Jillian, look at me," Abby pleads. "You are saving yourself. Do you hear me? You are strong and brave and you are saving yourself and I am so fucking proud of you."

The profanity is jarring, because Abby doesn't swear, and it shakes Holtzmann out of her anxious spiral.

"What?"

"I will always be here to cheer you on and help you pick yourself up when you fall down, but you're the one who's doing the real work. Do you understand?"

Holtzmann nods. Abby's looking at her in a way that scares her, but also makes her feel bright on the inside.

"I understand," she says, and she thinks she sort of does.

"You're my person,"Abby says quietly. Her lips quirk up at the corners. "And I am so in awe of you, all of you. Brain and body and non-corporeal essence. I love every single bit of you."

That's when it gets too real and Holtzmann dives for Abby and kisses her like it might never happen again. She's worried that Abby will judge her for her fear, but the brunette just giggles and flops back on the mattress.

"Go to it," she says merrily and Holtzmann crawls down her body, relieved to be back in familiar territory.

Afterward, Abby's tucked into Holtzmann's arms, sighing contentedly, when the blonde presses her lips to the top of her lover's head.

"I love every bit of you too," she murmurs. "Especially your boobs," she adds and Abby laughs, but Holtzmann knows she gets it.

Something in her starts to uncoil and Holtzmann wonders if it's possible to relax on a sub-atomic level. She's floating again, but it's a different kind of floating, one that elevates her whole body rather than erasing it.

She wouldn't say she's cured, because it's not that simple, but she's safe and she's loved and she loves. And it's enough.


End file.
